and divided into three aisles by two rows of clustered columns
of Purbeck marble, the intersections of the vaulting being covered with
a most curious series of carved bosses representing flowers, heads, and
shields. This crypt, which, fortunately, escaped the Great Fire, is the
finest and most extensive undercroft remaining in London, and for
excellence of design and sound preservation may be considered a unique
example of its kind. For many years it was neglected and choked with
rubbish, which covered its floors to the depth of several feet. In 1851
it was restored to its original condition, and was used as a supper-room
for H.M. Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort on the 9th July, when the
Corporation entertained the leading persons associated with the Great
Exhibition held in that year. On that occasion it was fitted up as a
baronial hall, the valuable plate lent by the City Companies being
displayed upon an oak sideboard. Around each of the columns stood men
clad in armour brought from the Tower of London, each holding a torch of
gas for lighting the crypt. A charming feature of the decoration was the
treatment of the passage in the western crypt--this was filled with
trees and flowers of various kinds, and hundreds of singing birds were
let free, thus giving the appearance of a forest glade in summer-time.
There is no evidence that this crypt was appropriated to any special use
in former times, but to-day it serves the useful, if unromantic, purpose
of a kitchen for preparing the mayoralty banquet on the historic ninth
of November.

The western crypt, which is separated from that just described by a
massive wall of contemporary date, has a roof of arched brickwork
dating, probably, from the period of the Great Fire. It is doubtful
whether it ever formed an open chamber, and it is now, with the
exception of its central passage, entirely devoted to cellarage. In one
of its deeply-recessed windows were discovered, in 1902, together with
some mediaeval stone coffin-lids, some portions of the famous Cheapside
cross, which was pulled down by order of the Long Parliament in 1643.
These fragments, which were removed to the Guildhall Museum, bear the
sculptured arms and badges of King Edward I. and his consort Queen
Eleanor. The cross was taken down at the request of the Corporation,
and, doubtless, by their officials, the mutilated fragments being
removed to Guildhall, where these two pieces evidently lay for over 250
ye